This was the paper I wrote as part of my senior
project/seminar for my Communication major. While
senior projects are optional for Communication majors, it
was an excellent opportunity to apply my past political
experience to the field of Communication study, and to help
organize an event which helped give the growing Department
of Communication even more credibility in the field of
Communication studies.
I was truly honored to have the support and assistance of
Dr. Vince Benigni, a fellow non-traditional student turned
academic, and Professor Mckown - who as a former Democratic
party leader, would have been on the other side of "enemy"
lines in years past - in organizing and presenting this
endeavor.
I. Introduction
II. A Look at Politics
and The Internet
Who is Online?
Tools of the Trade: How do they
Communicate online?
Rising Power: The Growth of the
Internet in Politics
Political opponents find their
voice on the Internet
Regulatory Approaches to Online
Campaigning
Reality Check: Problems with
Internet Campaigning
The Rise and Fall of Howard Dean
Politics and the Internet: The
only Constant is Change
III. Caught at the Physician’s
Auditorium: The Seminar
The Seminar
Organizing the Event
Lessons Learned
IV.
Works Cited
I.
INTRODUCTION
The Internet has changed the world of communication, and at
the same time, the Internet itself is changing. Ten years
ago, the Internet was a small and shadowy place, mostly serving
academics and researchers, but only just becoming known to the
public. Today, the Internet reaches into every community,
delivering high-speed data transfer capabilities to home users,
including near real-time transmission of audio and video media
content to tens of millions of American households. This
new and widespread technology has transformed how we communicate,
and with it, how we view the world around us.
One of many areas this new communication technology has changed
is the world of political communication. Where computers
were once simply technical tools of a campaign, used mostly
for administration of voter databases and desktop publishing,
they are now indispensable tools of a strategist’s communication
arsenal, to help manage a campaign and administer the distribution
of information. Today, using the Internet, political strategists
use computers and the internet to distribute the message and
connect the campaigns directly with the voters.
In recognition of the growing wave of change in the world of
political communication brought about by the Internet, a forum
entitled “Caught in the Web: The Internet and Political Strategy”
was held at the College of Charleston on December 4, 2003.
Hosted by the College and organized by Drs. Vince Benigni and
Jamie Mckown, two faculty members at the College, and Earl Capps,
a Communication Senior, the forum featured a six person panel
with a wide range of perspectives and experience with politics
on the Internet discussed its impact upon political strategy.
To help understand the impact the Internet has had upon the
realm of political communication, this paper will explore the
Internet’s extension into the realm of political communication
strategy, as well as discuss the forum event held at the college.
II.
A LOOK AT POLITICS AND THE INTERNET
Who
is Online?
With every passing election cycle, increasing number of voters
are online. According to Phil Noble, a political consultant
based in Charleston, South Carolina, and editor of Politics
Online (as well as a panel participant), in 2004, eighty percent
of voters will be online, with nearly half of those with broadband
access (Noble).
While the 2000 Presidential election was one of the closest
in American history, with the electorate almost evenly divided
between Republican candidate and eventual winner George W. Bush
and Democratic candidate Al Gore, a more significant margin
of support between the candidates exists with voters on both
sides of the digital divide. A study conducted for Democracy
Online by Thomas Opinion Research in November 2000 indicated
Bush with strong support over Gore with online voters, forty-four
percent of respondents to twenty-eight percent (the remainder
went to third party candidates or did not vote), but show Gore
winning thirty-two percent of respondents who did not use the
Internet to Bush’s twenty-six percent (IDPI).
The Thomas survey showed strong growth of the use of the Internet
as a political tool. In 1998, the survey found twenty-five
percent of respondents used the Internet to get information
about campaign and political news, a figure which increased
to thirty-five percent in 2000. The Thomas survey indicated
of those who used the internet for campaign and political news
in 2000, showed thirty-nine percent of users either sent or
received election information via email, twenty-five percent
used it to contact and receive information from political campaigns,
and ten percent participated in Internet chat or forums (IDPI).
Increasingly, voters are turning to the Internet for information
and news about campaigns and candidates. In 2000, forty
percent of respondents to the IDPI survey described the Internet
as an “important” source of information that helped them decide
how to vote. This was an increase from thirty-two percent
in 1998. Overall, fifty-eight percent of respondents used
the Internet is a source of political information regarding
the 2000 presidential race, and thirty-eight percent used it
as a source of information regarding that year’s Congressional
races (IDPI).
Tools
of the Trade: How do they Communicate online?
One of the biggest changes the Internet has brought about in
political communication has been it’s refocusing of candidates
away from mass media and towards approaches based upon direct
contact with voters. In his January 2004 in Jewish World
Review, columnist Michael Barone wrote: “For the past thirty
years, the staples of presidential campaigning have been: Raise
money from lots of rich people, and spend most of it on television
advertising. Now, there’s a new staple: personal contact
(Barone).”
Several tools used by campaigns on the Internet have become
commonplace. This includes campaign websites, distribution
of campaign newsletters and action alerts via email and website
posting, email broadcasts to supporters, the use of email to
provide rapid response to media gatekeepers, volunteer sign-up
forms on campaign websites, and online fundraising. Many
of these tools have been in use for sometime in relatively general
forms, and campaigns are focused on refining them to provide
more customized information that is more relevant to specific
audiences (Noble).
In addition to more tried-and-true online campaign techniques,
campaigns are experimenting with and implementing new tools
to get their messages out. Campaigns have begun to employ
the use of targeted banner adds to reach voters. America
Online sold banner ads to twenty statewide candidates in the
2002 election cycle, a first for the online service. Candidates
have begun providing information for supporters via PDA, and
begun sending text messages to supporters via cell phones (Noble).
One of the latest Internet communication tools to come online
in the 2004 election cycle is MeetUp.com. Through this
site, online supporters of candidates get online to trade contact
information and plan to meet offline in a discussion bulletin
board type of format. According to officials with the
MeetUp.com website, Howard Dean has nearly 140,000 supporters
signed up, with former candidate Wesley Clark with over forty-three
thousand supporters. Dean supporters have aggressively
used MeetUp to plan spontaneous volunteer activities in support
of their candidate, include passing out literature at college
football games and a mass “visibility” stunt at a Bruce Springsteen
concert (Zuckman). However, in a press release from Carol
Darr with the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet
(as well as a panel participant), noted a strong surge of MeetUp
registrations for supporters of Democratic Presidential candidates
John Kerry and John Edwards prior to their taking upset leads
over then-frontrunner Howard Dean in the Iowa caucuses (Darr).
Rising
Power: The Growth of the Internet in Politics
Politics first appeared on the Internet in 1994, with websites
for the campaigns of Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
and Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) going online. (Noble).
Two years later, the major party presidential candidates went
online, along with fifty of sixty-eight Senatorial candidates
in the 1996 general elections. In addition, it was the
first year that campaigns began sending press releases to journalists
on a large scale (Ku).
Usage of the Internet to communicate campaign information has
filtered down to lower-tier campaigns. While under sixty
percent of major party congressional candidates online in 2000,
this figure grew to over seventy percent in the 2002 election
cycle (Noble).
Looking ahead, Noble sees continuing change in how the Internet
is used by political campaigns. “In six years, the political
Internet went from ‘did not exist’ to ‘dominate political news
source in America … (a)nd you ain’t seen nothing yet.” With
the new restrictions upon soft money usage by the political
parties, the loophole in campaign regulation by the Federal
Election Commission may lead to large sums of soft money being
spent on online political advertising and communication. Also,
the increase in usage of broadband Internet access, estimated
to reach up to forty percent of voting households by Election
Day in 2004, will lead campaigns to provide richer communication
techniques via the web. The widespread availability of
high-speed access may likely open up new possibilities for online
content provided by campaigns (Noble).
The
Internet opens new doors for Campaign Financing
In December 2001, Liza Porteus, writing in the National Journal’s
Technology Daily, predicted that online fundraising via
the Internet would grow rapidly. In her column, Portues
forsaw between sixty and seventy-five million dollars in online
contributions in the 2002 election cycle, growing to at least
a quarter of a billion dollars for the 2004 cycle (Porteus).
Since the introduction of this technology, the high-profile
successes of several campaigns with this avenue of fundraising
have made this a popular tool. According to Phil Noble,
while less than twenty-five percent of campaign sites in the
2000 election cycle included online-fundraising options, over
fifty-five percent did so in the 2002 election cycle (Noble).
One of the watershed moments for online fundraising was in 1999,
when then Democratic Presidential candidate Phil Bradley used
online fundraising to raise one million dollars for his candidacy
(Noble). Later in that cycle, then-candidate Republican
John McCain experimented with an e-mail appeal for funds which
netted $64,000. The pace of fundraising has accelerated
since then, with Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean
raising twelve million of the twenty-five million he raised
in the first three quarters of 1999 online (Zuckman).
In spite of evidence suggesting President Bush may have comfortable
lead with online voters in the close 2000 election, his campaign
lags behind others in attempting to translate online support
to online cash. While candidates like Howard Dean have
used the internet to raise large percentages of their campaign
funds, only three million of Bush’s $130 million campaign warchest
was raised online (Barone).
Political opponents find their voice on the Internet
The ability of the Internet to provide a new communication medium
for political expression is a double-edged sword. Campaigns
have been able to use the Internet to help communicate campaign
messages, solicit campaign contributions, recruit supporters,
and rally campaign troops. However, those seeking to express
alternate opinions about political candidates have found the
Internet an equally, if not more, useful vehicle with which
to broadcast their opinions to a global audience.
One area exempted by the Federal Election Commission from regulation
is the practice of cybersquatting. According to Potter,
the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, enacted to
prevent those who use web addresses similar to those of groups
or people without their permission and often in a negative manner,
does not extend into the political realm. This allows
groups to purchase website domain addresses and use them to
oppose political candidates, even without their permission (Porteus).
The practice of using similar internet addresses to challenge
political candidates dates to the early years of the Internet.
In 1996, Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole’s campaign,
which used the address of www.dole96.org, was attacked via a
parody website at www.dole96.com. Robert Arena, co-founder
of Prestige Internet Campaigns and then-Webmaster for the Dole
campaign, reported that campaign strategists and attorneys had
discussed taking action to shut the website down. However,
the campaign chose to take no action and simply ignored the
website’s existence (Raney).
In its early days, the election campaign of President George
W. Bush faced a similar challenge. A group of online pranksters
called RTMark, led by Zack Exley, a computer consultant in Boston,
Massachusetts, put a parody website online at www.gwbush.com.
The Bush campaign, whose approach to internet marketing was
described by the campaign as “we’re not going to spend a lot
of money on consultants if we can get volunteers”, was caught
off-guard by the parody website, and acted to shut Exley and
his group’s website down (Raney).
Benjamin L. Ginsberg, attorney for the Bush campaign committee,
sent a cease-and-desist letter to Exley, demanding the website
be pulled offline. This letter was followed by a complaint
filed with the Federal Election Commission. Neither approach
worked to silence the group, and their website remained online.
An updated opening page proclaimed Bush as “the only candidate
with the courage to take on excessive freedom on the Internet.”
The episode backfired, with hundreds of thousands of daily visitors
to the gwbush.com website responding to the publicity and inspiring
Exley and his partners to turn a parody website into a more
serious and informative political opposition website (Raney).
Exley’s group is not the only occasion where online opposition
efforts are taking root and finding their voice. Founded
to oppose the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton,
MoveOn.org has found new life to support Democratic candidates.
For the 2004 election cycle, MoveOn has raised over four million
dollars from over one hundred and ten thousand supporters for
twenty-two political candidates (Noble).
Arena believed the Bush campaign wasted time and effort going
after the opposition website. Instead, he argued the best
approach for a political campaign to counter opposition websites
was to ignore them and focus on doing a better job of getting
their official website address out, including incorporating
it into all their marketing tools, so opposition groups will
get less attention for their websites. His opinions are
shared by Jonah Seiger of Mindshare Internet Campaigns, shared
his opinion with his warning: “Giving attention to a parody
site like this only raises its profile (Raney).”
Regulatory Approaches to Online Campaigning
The dilemmas faced by the Bush and Dole campaigns have raised
the question of how politics on the Internet will be governed
and regulated. Indications point to a more lasseiz-faire
philosophy towards Internet political activity, with regulators
hesitant, and possibly unable, to make a broad extension of
their enforcement powers into this new realm of political activity.
This philosophy is radically different from the 2000 election
cycle, where then-Presidential candidate Bill Bradley had to
fight the Federal Election Commission to allow his campaign
to raise funds via online credit card contributions (Zuckman).
Former Federal Election Commission chair Trevor Potter expressed
his concerns that political activity on the Internet was too
broad an area for the agency to regulate. According to
Potter, FEC staffers were considering exempting several types
of internet political activities from regulation, including
distribution of campaign information via personal computers;
links to political web sites from corporate web sites, as well
as those of unions and other kinds of organizations; and endorsements
of candidates on the websites of other organizations (Porteus).
Jonan Seiger warned that close regulation of Internet political
activity could have a harmful effect upon free speech.
“Requiring sites like his (gwbush.com) to register [with the
Federal Election Commission] would set a dangerous precedent,”
he warned in discussing the experience of the gwbush.com website.
Seiger pointed out that such a ruling from the FEC would require
independent activists who want to express opinions on political
candidates to hire attorneys and accountants to comply with
current FEC regulations. As many opposition websites are
products of independent citizens, or small groups of activists
with minimal budgets, they would be unable to afford the costs
of compliance and in all likelihood, be forced to take their
websites offline (Raney).
Reality
Check: Problems with Internet Campaigning
While the Internet’s growth has impacted the world of political
campaigns, some of the developments have been overblown, or
met with problems. These problems are often the end result
of a rapid trial-and-error process where new technologies and
methods of employing them are tested, and replaced with unprecedented
speed. It is, as it has always been, a challenge for campaigns
to identify those approaches that work, as well as engineer
other approaches to make them better meet the needs of their
campaigns.
Phil Noble cautions that many campaigns are still using “old”
approaches to using the Internet in their political communication
processes. Noble equates some of these approaches to “putting
a new television camera in front of a radio newsreader behind
a microphone and calling it TV (Noble).” The embarrassment
of Bush campaign in their battle against Exley’s group with
their gwbush.com website was attributed to the fact that it
had placed the control of its internet communication to a volunteer
group, instead of professionals with expertise in the field.
This resulted in the Bush campaign employing tactics with Exley’s
group that might have been more suited to the offline world
to cope with the opposition website (Raney).
A study conducted in January 2004 by Mindshare Internet Campaigns
showed that many emails from Presidential campaigns were not
reaching their intended destinations. “We suspected that
campaigns were not investigating the efficacy of their online
communication to supporters,” said Shabbir J. Safdar, who serves
as Mindshare’s Chief Technology Officer. For the study,
Mindshare created email test accounts on Microsoft’s Hotmail,
America Online, Earthlink, and Yahoo! The survey found
that, with the exception of Hotmail, this was a problem faced
with emails sent from every campaign. The worse victim
was the presidential campaign of former Vermont Governor Howard
Dean, who had all of his emails classified as spam by Yahoo!.
However, the survey found the problem was bipartisan, with twenty-five
percent of emails from the re-election campaign of Republican
President George W. Bush being rejected as spam (Mindshare).
Sometimes, high-tech solutions are not a cure-all for the problems
faced by campaigns and online political activisits. An
over-reliance on the use of the Internet as a substitute for
more traditional approaches in communicating political messages
may cause other problems. A study performed by the Center
for Democracy and Citizenship in November 2003 found similar
problems with the use of mass e-mails for campaign communication.
The survey, which was conducted with one thousand fifteen to
twenty-five year olds, found some of the much-touted internet
tools, such as email broadcasts, banner ads, and text messages
over cell phones, were more likely to alienate younger voters.
David Skaggs, executive directors for the organization warned:
“The Internet can be an important tool for getting young people
politically engaged, but it’s not a silver bullet (Rueters).”
The rise and fall of the campaign of 2004 Democratic Presidential
candidate Howard Dean has been attributed to an over-reliance
upon technology to reach voters. “The Internet revolution
of Howard Dean hasn’t yielded the results some people expected,”
warned Stuart Rothberg, a political analyst for the CNN cable
news network. “At the end of the day, you still have to
appeal to people and convince them to vote for you (Spector).”
The
Rise and Fall of Howard Dean
In 2003 and early 2004, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean
catapulted to the front of the pack of Democratic presidential
contenders seeking to challenge incumbent Republican President
George W. Bush. However, when the caucuses and primaries
got underway, Dean’s campaign foundered, with other candidates
pulling ahead of Dean. Much of the success, and possibly
the failure, of Dean’s candidacy can be attributed to its use
of the Internet.
Led by former campaign manager Joe Trippi, the Dean campaign
used the Internet to build a strong base of support, surprising
political observers with its record-breaking growth. Using
the Internet and e-mail, Dean was able to reach beyond traditional
liberal Democratic bastions to identify and recruit those who
supported his positions, most notably those which challenged
President George W. Bush and the war efforts in Afghanistan
and Iraq (Barone). The campaign raised a record forty-five
million dollars and recruited over six hundred thousand supporters
in less than a year, putting Dean at the front of the pack of
Democratic candidates before the Iowa Democratic caucuses (Auchard).
Many of the problems that were the undoing of the Dean campaign
were due to its over-reliance upon the Internet as a campaign
tool, both in terms of internal and external communication.
Emails sent out by campaign staff were rapidly duplicated through
the official organization, as well as eager supporters, creating
an unintended avalanche of spam mail that supporters found difficult
to filter through for valid campaign information, and it quickly
turned off others (Auchard).
The vast overlapping cyber-nets developed by the Dean campaign
and their supporters made it impossible for the campaign to
have the element of surprise it its campaign tactics, and allowed
overeager supporters to interfere in the process of campaign
strategy decision-making. Trippi lamented the harmful
effects of transparency: “We were having a real problem with
how to say ‘we could be in real trouble here’. Part of
the problem is that the press are reading our blogs (Auchard).”
Dean supporters were often willing to be involved in cyberspace,
but often unwilling to be involved in offline activities, according
to Phil Noble: “There are people who would give Howard
Dean an hour-and-a-half at three in the morning … when they
wouldn’t go to a precinct meeting in the afternoon for ten minutes
(Zuckman).”
While initially caught off-guard, other Democratic candidates
moved in, adapting Dean’s more successful tactics to their own
campaigns, growing their support while Dean floundered in the
polls, improving their websites, boost online fundraising, and
even developing strong blog and MeetUp followings. They
were also helped by the high level of transparency of Dean’s
anti-establishment campaign, and were even able to follow Dean
campaign activities by following open online discussions, drawing
inferences as to where the Dean campaign was planning to invest
in high-dollar campaign advertising (Auchard).
Politics and the Internet: The only Constant is Change
The internet has made the management of political campaigns
and communication of political messages far more complex.
It has opened new avenues and approaches for communication for
campaigns, as well as political opponents. Campaigns that
once relied on shoe leather, organizations, endorsements, and
mass media must now master a vast new array of technologies,
many of them rapidly evolving. The speed and ease of Internet
usage will make secretive campaign strategizing harder to conceal,
and controversial positions and statements harder to hide.
In the future, political strategists will have to confront a
process in which voters are becoming tough customers who expect
more information before they cast their votes for a candidate.
Campaigns will have to adapt to the reality that political opponents
will have stronger voices than ever, and will be able to distribute
their alternate messages with less cost and less regulation
than ever. This environment will require campaigns to
be more technically skilled, more flexible, and more honest.
The only constant in the arena of politics and the internet
is change. Accepting this new reality is the first and
foremost challenge for those who wish to communicate effectively
for or against political candidates.
III.
CAUGHT AT THE PHYSICIANS’ AUDITORIUM: THE SEMINAR
The
Forum
On December 4, 2003, a panel of six experts on various aspects
of political communication and the Internet met at the College
of Charleston to discuss their views of the impact of the Internet
upon present-day political strategy. This panel included:
- Carol
C. Darr, Director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy,
and the Internet at George Washington University in Washington,
D.C.
- Jaime
Mckown, Visiting Professor at the College of Charleston and
former Executive Director of the Nebraska Democratic Party
- Phil
Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.com, a major Internet political
portal, and President of Phil Noble & Associates, an international
political consulting firm
- Mark
Lisella, President of Lisella Public Affairs, a GOP campaign
consulting firm
- Jeff
Quinton, former publisher of the Palmetto Journal and a free-lance
IT consultant
- Neil
Swanson, Internet Communications Manager, Dick Gephardt for
President
Moderated by Warren Peper, news anchor with WCSC TV-5, the CBS
network affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina, the panel discussed
a number of issues related to the Internet. The event
was co-sponsored by the College’s Department of Communication,
the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Department
of Political Science.
Organizing the Event
Behind the ninety minutes on the stage at the College’s Physicians
Auditorium was months of work by the three member team that
organized the event: College of Charleston faculty members Dr.
Vince Benigni and Jamie Mckown, and myself, a Senior majoring
in Communication at the College. The first discussions
of the event took place between Dr. Benigni and myself in May
while I was a student in his Public Relations Practices course.
Having worked in numerous political campaigns for Republican
candidates in South Carolina, we had talked about an opportunity
that would allow me to apply my practical experience in politics,
as well as event and media management, in return for credit
towards my graduation requirements.
After some discussion with Dr. Benigni about the upcoming Presidential
campaigns, as well as my past experience with political website
development, it was decided we would organize a seminar featuring
a panel discussion of the impact of the Internet on present-day
campaigns. In these meetings, I served as secretary of
meetings, responsible for taking notes, writing the minutes,
and emailing them to meeting participants, in addition to identifying
and recruiting two of the panelists for the event, specifically
Mark Lisella, a Republican political consultant who would serve
as the “Republican” on the panel, and Jeff Quinton, an Internet
media expert. I would also employ my media contacts to
help promote the event and was responsible for writing the media
releases, the bio release about the panelists, as well as designing
the posters and program guides for the event.
The first planning meeting for the event included Dr. Benigni,
Ferguson, and Mckown of the Department of Communication, Dr.
Bill Moore of the Department of Political Science, and myself.
This brainstorming session threw out ideas for more specific
topics, discussed possible dates for the event, and potential
speakers and moderators. It was decided that the topic
would cover the impact of the Internet upon Political Communication,
and would focus on both state and national campaigns, to give
a broader look at the impact of the Internet, as well as to
attract speakers that would interest attention in the event
from beyond the region. At the meeting, we also suggested
names of potential speakers, and agreed to begin pursuing them
to see if they would be willing to participate. McKown,
Benigni, and myself would serve as the primary working group
to organize the event.
The panel was selected after the first meeting, as well as other
discussions between different members of the working group,
via personal contact, email, and telephone calls. The
intent of the panel selection was to present as broad as possible
a range of perspectives on the topic, including Democratic and
Republican political operatives, but also from internet media
and academic experts. Dr. Benigni was responsible for
recruiting Neil Swanson, the Internet campaign manager for the
Dick Gephardt for President campaign, and Warren Peper, a news
anchor at WCSC TV Channel Five, the local CBS affiliate, who
would serve as the event moderator. In addition to serving
as a panelist, Dr. Mckown recruited Phil Noble of Politics Online,
and Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and
the Internet at George Washington University in Washington,
D.C. In addition to my panelists, we felt the panel reflected
a wide, diverse, and balanced range of perspectives that would
provide attendees a substantive look at Politics and the Internet.
Dr. Benigni would work with Dr. Ferguson to find a location
for the event, as well as commit resources for hospitality and
lodging for out-of-state panelists. Early in October 2003,
the College committed the use of the Physicians’ Auditorium
for the event. They also obtained accommodations at the
Faculty House for out-of-state panelists, travel expense money
for panelists, as well as the use of space in the Jewish Studies
Center for a pre-event social for the panelists and faculty
members.
In the last week before the event, a marketing effort to promote
the event employed a broad range of tools. At the urging
of Department of Communication chair Dr. Ferguson and Dr. Benigni,
many faculty members within the Department encouraged their
students to attend and participate. Media releases were
sent by Mike Robertson of the College’s office of College Relations
and Media Communications and myself blanketed regional media,
including daily and weekly newspapers and television.
In addition to the “old media” outreach, I used my contacts
with Internet media sources to distribute information about
this event. Jeff Quinton, a panelist and publisher of
JQuinton.com, also posted information about the event on his
political blogsite, which helped further distribute information
about this event amongst internet political observers.
On campus, Dr. Mckown and myself led a poster campaign that
blanketed the campus with hundreds of posters in the last week
before the event.
The event, which took place the week before the Fall 2003 semester
finals, involved a high degree of coordination to accommodate
the nearly full auditorium. Mike Robertson and the staff
of the College Relations and Media Communications provided audio-visual
and information technology support for the event, as well as
visiting media. Volunteers from the College Democrats
were responsible for distributing program guides to attendees.
Warren Peper, in his role as moderator, was provided with bio
summaries on the panelists, as well as a list of questions with
which to prompt discussion from the panelists. Peper’s
questions were submitted from Drs. Benigni, Ferguson, Mckown,
and myself. After an hour of moderated discussion amongst
panelists, an open-microphone Question and Answer session with
the audience took place for approximately half an hour before
the event ended.
Lessons
Learned
The event, which nearly filled the five hundred seat Physicians’
Auditorium, was a rare event for the College. Unlike many
political forums, the line-up of speakers selected from outside
of South Carolina political and media sources presented a different
and broader perspective of the growth of Politics on the Internet.
As a result, the College received attention from outside of
the region. One example was a request from the campaign
of Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, whose staff
requested permission to set up a table outside of the event.
As a long-time political operative, I was impressed with the
qualifications of the panelists, as well as their knowledge
of the subject. Rarely would a student at the College,
or a political operative in South Carolina, have an opportunity
to receive such a high-powered informational session as was
provided by the panelists. That the College can host an
event with such a high caliber of speakers is a truly impressive
statement about the quality of both the working team that organized
the event, as well as the Department of Communication, as well
as the College itself.
After the event, I conducted brief interviews of Mark Lisella
and Jeff Quinton, two of the panel participants, to help assess
the event’s performance from alternate, but professional, standpoints.
Both panelists gave the event high marks, citing the broad
range of backgrounds and experience of the panelists, the depth
of knowledge of the panelists, as well as the quality of the
organization of the event.
“The diversity of the panel helped
give me an idea where my work stood in terms of depth and quality
of coverage,” said Quinton. “After years of being ‘in
the ring’ with my websites, I was able to get a better perspective
of the work others are conducting, and some insight on how to
improve my work.” Quinton reported his participation in
the event also helped to boost his reputation among other internet
journalists, by his association with a non-partisan academic
event (Quinton).
Mark Lisella agreed the panelists represented a broad range
of quality perspectives on political communication on the Internet.
“Having worked across the country, I have worked with, and against,
a lot of quality people,” he said. “The panel members
showed strong knowledge in the field of politics and the Internet.
It is a rare opportunity that such a line-up can be found in
such a location as the College of Charleston who can give their
audience such a ‘cutting edge’ perspective on this hot topic
in modern-day political communication (Lisella).”
In the time that I have returned to college, I have been fortunate
to have had the opportunity to share some of my practical knowledge
of the political arena. The forum on Politics and the
Internet was a rare opportunity to put my past experiences to
work, helping to provide a real-world educational opportunity
for my fellow students. In helping to organize this event,
I had a rare opportunity to work with a broad range of academic
and political professionals in an academic and non-partisan
environment, a refreshing experience for one like myself who
has been known for being a partisan activist. While I
have been scaling back my political involvement to focus my
energies and talents towards my family and new challenges in
my life, I am truly appreciative for the opportunity to be involved
in such an event.
IV. WORKS
CITED
Auchard,
Eric. “Dean internet campaign helped rivals”, February
11, 2004. The Scotsman, http://www.scotsman.com
Barone,
Michael. “The new shoe-leather politics”, January 12,
2004. Jewish World Review.
Darr,
Carol. “MeetUp Registrations foreshadowed John Edwards
and John Kerry’s Iowa Victories”. News Advisory from Institute
for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet, George Washington
University, February 11, 2004.
IDPI:
Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet. “Post-Election
2000 Survey on Internet Use”, December 4, 2000.
http://www.idpi.org/survey2000.shtml
Ku:
Ku, Gyotae; Kaid, Lynda Lee; and Pfau, Michael. “The Impact
of Web Site Campaigning on Traditional News Media and Public
Information Processing”, Autumn 2003, Vol. 80, No. 3.
Journalism and Mass Communicaton Quarterly.
Lisella,
Mark. Personal interview. Monday, January 12, 2004.
Mindshare:
Mindshare Internet Campaigns, LLC. “Study finds that Presidential
candidate e-mails don’t always reach supporters”, January 27,
2004.
http://www.mindshare.net/news//2004-01-27.121.phtml
Noble,
Phil. “From Novelty to Necessity: No Breakthroughts but Broader,
Faster, Quicker, Smarter … and More to Come”, November 4, 2002.
http://www.politicsonline.com/pol2000/specialreports/campaign_analysis_2002
Porteus,
Liza. “Politicos see Expanding Campaign Role for Internet”,
December 11, 2001.
http://nationaljournal.com/reprints/0802reprint2_ms.htm
Raney,
Rebecca Fairley. “Bush shows how not to handle the Internet,
Experts say”, June 8, 1999. New York Times, Technology
Section.
Quinton,
Jeff. Personal interview. Monday, January 12, 2004.
Rueters:
Rueters News Service (author unknown). “Net campaign tactics
can turn off young”, January 15, 2004. http://www.rueters.co.uk
Spector,
Lincoln. “Can Tech Turn an Election?”, February 2, 2004.
PC World Magazine.
Zuckman,
Jill. “Candidates spin web of support on cyberspace”,
December 3, 2003. Chicago Tribune.
